I worked for a large chain of bookstores and I saw many things while working there but these stories always come to mind when someone asks for good retail hell stories:

1. We had a man that would shit on the floor in the mens room, and when the manager on duty (he only did it if one of the male managers was there) responded to the call to clean it up, he would stuff his back pack with blu rays and run.

2. We had a guy who would come in and buy a porno magazine (usually Hustler) with the nastiest $5 bills ever, from which he earned the nickname "Crusty." He would take said magazines and go and masturbate in his car. He would cum into a large soda bottle that he had bought from our neighboring store and then bring the magazine and his swimmer-filled soda bottle and dump them in the trash can right in front of our store. I lost my lunch over this once. One time he was seen by a mother and her child and had the police called. Not sure if he ever made it on the sex offenders registry.

3. We had a man and woman team that liked to hit garage/yard sales and find whatever books they could and then try to return them to us. The books would be 15 years old, yellowing and have the cover and all the pages bent. We never did a return for him.

4. I had a girl purchase one of the Twilight books and then ask me what the return/refund policy was. She was under the impression that she could read the book and return it for credit towards the next book in the series. She did try to bring it back and we denied her the return because the book had a coffee/cola stain on half the pages and had the cover bent. She wasn't too happy.

5. I had a guy try and return a GED prep book that he had written in (filled out the practice answer questions) and did a significant amount of highlighting in. The book was purchased over a year ago when he tried to return it.

6. Had a woman bitch me up and down because "Harry Potter" didn't have Cliffnotes.

7. Woman once dropped off her shopping list for me during the holidays and said, "can you please help me with these? I need to run to the restroom and I will be right back." So I start checking to see if we have them and where they are and I see her walk out of the bathroom and over to wait in line for 5 minutes to get a coffee, grab a magazine and then sit down and eat her cookie and drink her coffee. After watching this, I left her list at the desk and went to help someone else.

8. My favorite story is one that still makes me angry to this day. I had a woman call during the holiday rush and ask for directions to our store. She lived one city over, so it was fairly easy to give her directions. I told her to take the main road "X" out of town until you hit major road "Y" and to take major road "Y" until you saw the shopping center. She said she had no idea what I was talking about and had never heard of road X or Y despite having lived in the city for 20 years. I double checked myself and looked at the road names on GMaps, and sure enough, I was correct. After arguing with her for a good 10 minutes about how to get here she said "OH JESUS, YOU KNOW WHAT? JUST GIVE ME YOUR ADDRESS AND I WILL PUT IT IN THE NAVIGATION SYSTEM IN MY CAR!" I sat there in stunned silence for about 5 seconds before hanging up the phone. I radioed over to everyone that if a woman called asking for directions or our address, to tell her to Google it.

Well there are the 8 stores that still stick in my mind today about the customers, excuse me "guests" I had to serve. Sometimes I think about it and I miss working retail, and then remember that my paycheck now is triple what I made in retail.

Edit: words

EDIT 2: one thing I really loved was knowing what the Oprah book club books were before they came out. I had a lady that would come in religiously and say "I know you know, you can tell me, I won't tell anyone!"

I also really loved when people would come in asking me to make an exception and let them buy a book that was supposed to be released the next day a day early. They were like "oh come on, I won't tell anyone I got it here. Pleeeease!" And when I refused they'd scoff at me and walk away.

I also went through a liquidation with this store and maybe I'll post a new thread about that nightmare.